Patchwork Family
Reflections on divorce and the passing of time
We understand the world by how we retrieve memories, re-order
information into stories to justify how we feel.
Stephan Elliott
June 5th 1969
My story technically begins on
June 5th 1969. The day
of my birth.
I used to try to recreate the
particulars of that day in my mind.
Here’s what I’ve been told: my mother in the hospital, alone. My grandparents waiting in the hall beyond
the delivery room doors. My father
hundreds of miles away finishing up the last few classes of his junior year in
high school.
No matter how I tell it, it feels
like such an incomplete story, so instead I search for other beginnings.
Perhaps the story begins nine
months earlier.
But the story of my conception is
something I have to invent. I
imagine asking, ‘mom, do you recall the weather on the day you and my father
created me? What were you wearing? What time of day was it? What did you feel like moments after?’
Awkward.
So instead, I tell it this way: in
northern New Mexico, mid-September, it can be hot, the final clutches of
summer, or it can be brisk, the first punches of fall knocking summer into
memory. It was late in the
evening. The sky clear. There is a lake just outside of town with
picnic tables. Let’s say, it
happened there.
Why should I ask my mother? It’s
my story after all. Do I want to
know her answers, her version of the story of my origins?
Maybe she can’t remember details
because they were like bunnies, one hot tryst blending into another. Maybe it was an ugly experience for
her, fraught with guilt, shame, coercion; perhaps my origin is a regret she
still bears, perhaps it was an accident.
So I rewrite and reinvent the
facts, the narrative, but no matter how I tell it, I can’t avoid certain
outcomes. I was born, my father
was absent, my mother eventually left the state and his family behind.
Somewhere in all that, my story
starts; it’s what leads to the story of my family now: three kids, an
ex-partner, some great years together, some painful ones, some regrets, some
anger. But there’s more to it than
that.
I tell stories to try to make
sense of it all, to explain how we got from there to here.
Summer 2012
There is a scene in the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, in the
midst of some revelry during the storm, the father leans back and looks at his
child sitting off to the side, watching the adults play, and he asks: ‘did I
ever tell you the story of your conception?’ It seems clear that he has, many times, but the child looks
on waiting for the story, eager. You can see it in her eyes.
My children get that same look.
Their mother and I have been
separated for years now. My
youngest child probably remembers little of us together. The way we used to love each other, the
way we cared for each other. I
asked her recently if she did, and she shook her head no and then asked
me: ‘do you?’
It was a strange question I
thought, but then, I realized the profundity of it. For me at least.
Do I remember?
I do.
I used to believe I told the
stories of my children’s beginnings for them, so they could know where they
came from, that though their family has changed and evolved, they were always
loved, fiercely and without question.
But I tell these stories for myself as well.
September 1997
Ella, you were born so quickly I
barely had time to cry. Your
mother wanted the Cadillac Birth, she
boasted months ahead of her due date.
After two natural births, she wanted to get the drugs! We’d high-five each other. What the hell could I say; I simply
tried to be supportive.
We waited to the last minute to
prepare for your birth. In fact,
it was on the day of our hospital tour, your mother noticed weird contractions;
she assumed it was just Braxton-Hicks or something. Eight hours later we were back in the hospital, being
wheeled into the delivery room, and it was then she was told she was too far
along for drugs; you were coming.
And you did. It wasn’t until I held you and touched
your cheeks that I cried. And you
joined in as if on cue, screaming and crying with such determination and anger,
a lot like how you are today.
September 2005
We sit all the kids on our bed one
night in September. It’s
there we tell them their mother will be moving out in a few weeks. It’s then we explain our family will be
changing dramatically. Life will
be changing. Our son nods like he
understands. Our middle daughter
just sits there. Our youngest
immediately starts crying. Then we
all do. It’s the first and last
time we all cry, together, as a family.
Sometime in 1980
After my mother found a place to
live in another state, after my brothers and I started new schools, after we
struggled to fit into our new neighborhoods and make new friends, my mother one
night handed me the phone; it was our father. We hadn’t seen him in a few months. He told me then that he would not be
moving in with us like we were promised when we first moved. He was going to remain thousands of
miles away in Hawaii but he’d come visit soon. My mom stood off to the side and couldn’t really look at
me. I passed the phone to my
younger brothers. I walked to my
room trying not to cry. It’s all I
really remember.
September 1990
I have told this story many times
before. But it bears
repeating. Making family is not
something that just happens. It’s
a choice; it takes intention, dedication, perseverance. I sat in my car idling at the first
intersection I came to on my way to get food for my girlfriend who was back at
our house trying desperately to breastfeed our first child. She was twenty. I was twenty-one. Somehow that is important. Perhaps it explains why I sat there
wondering what to do. Perhaps
sitting there, I thought of my father and the distance there always seemed to
be between us. Perhaps, I
remembered my mother’s face as I left her room that night, her look of anger
and shame at not telling us the true story of our family’s break-up until it
was too late, her silence her only apology. Perhaps, I thought of the look on my girlfriend’s face right
after our son slid from her body, the wide-eyed look of a person who just
discovered the answer to so many things.
Whatever it was I thought of, I decided then, right there, that I would
not let my fear of fucking things up prevent me from trying to make this family
work.
October 2005
We gathered all the kids together
in their mother’s new living room.
Her face a mask of apprehension and fear. I choked down my anger at feeling left behind, at the fear
that my family was breaking.
Families don’t break, I told
myself. Over and over.
I gathered them together. I put a candle in the center of
us. I asked my partner, the mother
of my children, the woman who was now choosing to start something new, to light
her match, the long stemmed strike-anywhere kind. Then each of the children lit theirs, and then I did. We all lit two candles, one for her
house and one for mine.
By the candle light I could see
the kids’ faces, both sad and unsure, but in the orange glow, I could see they
felt safe. We all looked at each
other and then blew out the matches.
October 2012
This is my story.
I was born on June 5th
1969. I am a father of three. But there is more to it than that.
I have a large extended family, a
network of friends and a loving girlfriend. I’ve learned now that family is not static, not limited to
one or two or ten possibilities; family is nebulous, shifting, consensual. It’s difficult, can hurt, can push you
out of your comfort zone. Family
is the stories we tell to give ourselves roots, to make connections, to foster
new possibilities. It’s a patchwork quilt, a collage of hushed conversations, a
montage of fading memories. Family
continues to grow and change.
Here’s an example, a new story I
am working on.
My son decided to leave, needed, I
think, his own space from his mother and his father. He lived a year in NYC and now has returned to his own
apartment in west Oakland. We hang
out weekly, sometimes sharing a beer, sometimes eating a meal, generally
talking about the Oakland Raiders, but slowly we are moving towards more
personal, difficult subjects. I am
trying to close the distance between us.
I want to ask him what he remembers of his youth, of the way our family
used to be, of the way it is now.
What all these things mean to him?
I want to hear his stories.
Just as, someday soon, I hope to
hear my daughters' stories, who will be embarking on their own journey in a few
years.
In fact, I can’t wait to hear the
stories they tell of what family means to them. And just as I have my own story, the stories they tell will
be their own.
I’m sure their beginnings and
endings and what it all means will be so different.
And shocking.
And surprising.